Upper Level

South face. Would you arrange the stone differently?

I love your house plan. The only thing I saw that I would want to change for myself would be the laundry room. I like to have room for baskets of clothes. Everything else looks like it will be really nice. As far as the stone on the exterior, I like where you have it. I don't like the arched windows but for some reason, I am an anti-arch person all of a sudden with no reason. Would love to see pics when you start building.

I like that you have placed furniture in the rooms to make sure it fits. And I like how upstairs the BR closets are placed to buffer noise between BRs and other spaces.

Can you change the laundry room to have a pocket door and put the WD on the right hand wall? This would let you use the whole counter on the left. I'm not sure you have enough width for an aisle that way; the dimensions say 7 x 8'10" but the drawing looks like a square so I'm not sure which way the long wall runs, and you might have to steal a bit of space from the kitchen or office to make it work anyway.

I'm not a big fan of 2 story rooms as I feel that the upper space could be better used, but that's personal preference and I know some people love them. I do like that someone in BR1 doesn't have to walk past the open railing en route to the restroom.

Post the kitchen on the kitchens forum - great layout help there!

oops I read the laundry dimensions wrong. There won't be room for the WD on the right hand wall without stealing a few feet from the kitchen or office. Think about moving the sink closer to the bottom wall so you have a long stretch of counter above it. A pocket door would still be nice as the open door, as is, will get in the way of accessing the dryer.

Hi, thanks for the comments. The laundry room is 7' wide x 6'10" deep. I'll see if I can tinker with the WD layout.

I like it! I would make on minor change - I'd put the walk-in door to the garage to the right of the overhead doors. That gives you room to put shelving on the north wall (I'm a storage pig), though it puts the cars closer together. Our garage is 22' wide, and that's plenty of room. Too much space between cars is wasted.

In the kitchen, I'd recommend an easy-reach upper cabinet in the corner, instead of the diagonal. I second the recommendation to post a close-up of the kitchen on the Kitchens forum. It's a good layout, but perhaps it could be better.

I like the plan a lot.

I don't care for the elevation at all. It just looks messy. There is so much going on with the different windows, double gable stone and such. If you could clean it up, I think it would be a great house.

Overall, I think it looks really good, I personally don't like the location of the fridge, but that's mainly because I like having a counter right next to my fridge, in case I have something heavy to put in, and I'm always in and out of my fridge pulling out milk/cheese/condiments/drinks and so forth, it just isn't a convenient location for me personally!

BUT in all honesty, it looks really good!

I would definitely suggest keeping the dryer on the outside wall for easy venting.

This may or may not bother you, but it is something I wish someone had asked me to think about before I built...

Your house faces south, but it seems most of the rooms where you will be spending most of your time (?) face north.

Depending upon what climate you are in, that may (or may not) bother you.

For years, I lived in a house where most of my living spaces faced south. I never thought about it. Then I built a new house, and I'm spending most of my time in north facing rooms. I don't like it at all. It took me several months to figure out what the problem was.

I never would have thought I was particularly light sensitive either.

All I can advise is to think about your "favorite" rooms in your current house. Do you think lighting plays a factor? How do you feel in north-facing rooms in your current house? (If someone had asked me that question before I built, I'd be so much happier now....)

I'm in the frigid tundra of New York though. If you are in a sunny warm place, it might be a total non-issue.

I agree with changing the "man door" for the garage. You have the entry into the house smack dab in the middle of that wall, and of the car, and will always be walking all the way around the cars. I can't see a way to move it that allows you to keep the pantry and fridge in the kitchen and the nice-sized office. So if you can move at least that first car over, you'll have room to walk around without brushing up against it.

On the porch wall, you have a great opportunity for seasonal decorating to the left of the door!

Does your dining room dimension include the bay window? If so, you won't be seating 10 people without the person at that end climbing in through the window.

The 2-story living room will get great light! In the summer, you will definitely want remote-control blinds for those upper windows; all the greenhouse heat will warm up the bedrooms a good deal.

I am not an expert, but I wonder how much you would save if you flipped the upstairs MBR and hall bath so the plumbing all aligns.

Overall, it looks pretty good. I agree with others, I don't like the two story living room. It's not that large and I think the scale will be all wrong, with the very high ceiling. Instead, what if you move the laundry upstairs (over the kitchen) and make the office larger (with a closet?) then move the bedroom to above the living room. Maybe have a reading/play nook between laundry and bedroom?

I'm not a huge fan of two story living rooms either, but that's totally a personal preference. What I am sure I wouldn't like is having the laundry room on a separate level from all the bedrooms. Dragging all that up and down the stairs would be a, well, drag...

Hi all, thanks for the kind words. I totally agree about the walk-in door in the garage. However, the dotted line over the garage represents the upper level. If I move the right garage door over, the upper level will be resting on the middle of the garage door and the support columns will be in the way. Unless someone has a better idea, the door will have to stay where it is.

First thing that caught my eye was the comment that the house is south-facing. As someone else pointed out, this means that your best light is wasted on the garage, the seldom-used formal dining room, and the staircase. This is a big deal, in my opinion.

Overall I like the room sizes (comfortable, but not overblown) and the layout. A couple things I'd alter, mostly for the sake of comfort:

The furniture you've placed in the dining room will really max-out your space. If you're dead-set on this table size, you might want to increase the size of the room. Consider the math: You're seating 4 people on each side of the table -- at a scant 24" per person (and that's elbow-to-elbow), your table'll be 8' long. That gives you about 30" at each end of the table. Once someone is seated in a chair, the people behind him will be trapped. The width is similarly problematic: My table is this size, and it's 42" wide -- we'll assume that's standard. With the china buffet eating up probably 20" of space, you have only about 30" of space on the short sides of the room. If you're willing to go down a table size, you'll be fine with this room, but "as is", you're not going to have room for comfort. The front entry is nice and wide -- I'd consider stealing from it. Or recess the buffet into the garage?

I like the office /laundry area for location and good use of space, but I'd definitely want some space to fold clothes. Could you go with a stack-up washer/dryer, so that you'd have perhaps 40" of cabinet upon which to fold (and equal space underneath to store waiting baskets)?

With no bedroom downstairs /no space that could reasonably become a bedroom, why a full bath downstairs? I'd rather have nicer granite in the kitchen or nicer tile in the bathroom than a "just in case" tub.

I like the kitchen and the pantry. I don't like the placement of the refrigerator. It's too far from the work triangle, and you don't have a good landing spot. I'm kind of "ehh" on the casual dining area; I really hate walking past one table to get to another table -- pet peeve of mine.

I'm with the no-thanks-to-two-story-rooms crew, but this is personal opinion. The one plus in this particular application is that it'll throw some light into what otherwise could've been a long, dark upstairs hallway.

No one ever has enough storage, and I see a place you could add another closet: Take your entry hall closet, bump it towards the staircase, and place a second closet back-to-back with it. This could be a china closet, a second pantry, a locking closet for gifts (or guns), a downstairs toy closet, or an all-purpose closet.

An oddity I notice: With this open floor plan, you're using most of your walls for doors and windows . . . you don't have any space for bookcases. You could have a small book tower in the office, but that would be fairly minimal.

The bedrooms look to be a reasonable size, nice windows, and the closets are providing quiet-buffers from the other bedrooms.

Going back to math, the master closet is too narrow for comfort. At 6'4" wide, you'll be using 24" on each side for clothing . . . which leaves you only 28" walking space down the middle. I don't like to be cramped in functional spaces like this, so I'd take a foot from the bedroom (which isn't over-sized, but can afford to give up the foot).

I do not like the master bath. You have a fair amount of "empty" space in the middle, yet the two sink vanities are piddly-small. I think it's going to feel like a fairly large room . . . with items arranged around the edges. Also, since the bathroom is above the garage (a large unheated space), I'd be sure to use plenty of quality insulation in the floorboards . . . or maybe even splurge on heated flooring.

The plan isn't really my taste, so I can't really comment on it much. Seems like it has a pretty good flow though. The only thing I would say is to flip the door on the toilet room. It looks like it is a little tight in their. Also, if anything should ever happen in there and somebody winds up on the floor, you won't be able to get the door open to help them.

Our last house was South facing with most of the windows on the back, and it does make for a dark home, especially in the winter. I don't generally consider myself to be sensitive to light, but in that house I bought a sunlight lamp because I noticed I was getting blue in the winter.

We do live in the North, though. If you're building somewhere with lots of light, it might not be an issue.

really nice house! the only 2 things I would try to change would be:

1. like was said, the master walk-in may be tight with hanging clothes on both sides and only a little over 2 feet to walk between.

2. it looks to be a slider? in the breakfast area and living area. unless you need both sliders, maybe add those 3 windows you have on the second floor of the living room and match them below in place of the slider? just a suggestion.

overall, love the plan and the flow!

Hi stblgt, thanks for your comments.
1. I'll consider adding a few inches to the master walk-in. It seems to be the hot topic of this discussion.

2. They are indeed both sliders. The idea of the slider in the living area is for ease of access during the winter bringing wood in for the intended wood stove insert. Good suggestion though.